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Monday, July 8, 2013

Vatican
City, 6 July 2013 (VIS) – This morning Pope Francis visited the
Italian island of Lampedusa, for some years now an entry point for
many immigrants, a significant number of whom have lost their lives
in the surrounding seas.

The
pope left Rome's Ciampino military airport at 8 a.m. arriving at the
island at 9.15 a.m., where he was greeted by Archbishop Francesco
Montenegro of Agrigento and by the mayor of Lampedusa, Giuseppina
Nicolini. He proceeded to Cala Pisana by car, where he boarded a boat
in order to arrive at the Port of Lampedusa by water. The Holy Father
was accompanied by fishermen in their boats. During the journey he
committed a wreath to the sea in memory of those immigrants who have
lost their lives attempting to cross the Mediterranean. The Pope's
arrival at the port at Punta Favarolo was awaited by a group of
around fifty immigrants, many of whom were Muslims, living in the
reception shelters in Lampedusa. He greeted them one by one and then
departed by car for the nearby “Arena” sports field in the
Salinas quarter, where at 10.30 a.m. he celebrated Mass.

The
form of the Mass was that “for the forgiveness of sins”, included
in the Missal among the masses for particular needs. The Liturgy of
the Word consisted of readings on the story of Cain and Abel, the
massacre of the innocents, and the Miserere psalm, emphasizing the
penitential aspect of the Liturgy. The Holy Father used a crosier and
chalice from the parish of Lampedusa made of wood from boats by which
immigrants reached the island. Both were the work of an artisan from
Lampedusa, who had offered assistance to the immigrants during the
emergencies.

Given
below are extensive extracts from the Pope's homily:

“Immigrants
dying at sea, in boats which were vehicles of hope and became
vehicles of death. Since I first heard of this tragedy a few weeks
ago, and realised that it happens too frequently, it has constantly
come back to me like a painful thorn in my heart. So, I felt that I
had to come here today, to pray and to offer a sign of my closeness,
but also to challenge our consciences lest this tragedy be repeated.
Please, let it not be repeated!”

The
Pope thanked the inhabitants and the authorities of Lampedusa for
their solidarity with the immigrants and greeted the Muslims among
them who today begin the fast of Ramadan, and added, “The Church is
at your side as you seek a more dignified life for yourselves and
your families”.

“This
morning, in the light of God's Word which has just been proclaimed, I
wish to offer some thoughts to challenge people's consciences, to
lead them to reflection and a concrete change of heart”.

“'Adam,
where are you?' This is the first question God poses to man after his
sin. Adam lost his bearings, his place in creation because he thought
he could be powerful, able to control everything, to be God. Harmony
was lost, man errs and this error occurs over and over again also in
relationships with others. The 'other' who is no longer a brother or
sister to be loved, but simply another person who disturbs our lives
and our comfort. God asks a second question, 'Cain, where is your
brother?'. The illusion of being powerful, of being as great as God,
even of being God Himself, leads to a whole series of errors, a chain
of death, even to the spilling of a brother's blood! God's two
questions echo even today, as forcefully as ever. How many of us,
myself included, have lost our bearings; we are no longer attentive
to the world in which we live … we do not take care of that which
God created for all of us, and we are no longer capable even of
looking after each other. And when humanity as a whole loses its
bearings, it results in tragedies like the one we have witnessed.

“'Where
is your brother?' His blood cries out to me, says the Lord. This is
not a question directed to others, it is a question directed to me,
to you, to each of us. These brothers and sisters of ours were trying
to escape difficult situations to find some serenity and peace; they
sought a better place for themselves and their families, but instead
they found only death. How often do such people fail to find
understanding, fail to find acceptance, fail to find solidarity. And
their cry rises up to God! I recently listened to one of these
brothers of ours. Before arriving here, he and the others were at the
mercy of traffickers, people who exploit the poverty of others,
people who live off the misery of others. How much these people have
suffered! Some of them never made it here.

“'Where
is your brother?' Who is responsible for this blood? In Spanish
literature there is a work by Lope de Vega which narrates how the
inhabitants of the city of Fuente Ovejuna kill their tyrannical
governor, and they do so in a way that no-one knows who carried out
the execution. And when the king's judge asks, 'Who killed the
governor?', they all answer, “Fuente Ovejuna, my lord”. Everybody
and nobody! Today too, this question emerges forcefully: who is
responsible for the blood of these, our brothers and sisters? Nobody!
That is our answer: it isn't me, I don't have anything to do with it;
it must be someone else, but certainly not me. Yet God is asking each
of us: 'Where is the blood of your brother which cries out to me?'.
Today no-one in our world feels responsible; we have lost a sense of
responsibility for our brothers and sisters; we have fallen into the
hypocrisy of the priest and the Levite whom Jesus described in the
parable of the Good Samaritan: we see our brother half dead on the
side of the road, perhaps we say to ourselves: 'poor soul...!', and
then go on our way; it's not our responsibility, and with that we
feel reassured. The culture of comfort, which makes us think only of
ourselves, makes us insensitive to the cries of other people, makes
us live in soap bubbles which, however lovely, are insubstantial;
they offer a fleeting and empty illusion which results in
indifference to others; indeed, it even leads to the globalisation of
indifference. We have become used to the suffering of others, it
doesn't affect me; it doesn't concern me; it is none of my business.
The globalisation of indifference makes us all 'unnamed', responsible
yet nameless and faceless.

“'Adam,
where are you?' 'Where is your brother?' These are the two questions
which God asks at the dawn of human history, and which he also asks
each man and woman in our own day, which he also asks us. But I would
like us to ask a third question: 'Has any one of us wept because of
this situation and others like it?' Has any one of us grieved for the
death of these brothers and sisters? Has any one of us wept for these
persons who were on the boat? For the young mothers carrying their
babies? For these men who were looking for a means of supporting
their families? We are a society which has forgotten how to weep, how
to experience compassion – 'suffering with' others: the
globalization of indifference has taken from us the ability to weep!
In the Gospel we have heard the crying, the wailing, the great
lamentation: 'Rachel weeps for her children… because they are no
more'. Herod sowed death to protect his own comfort, his own soap
bubble. And so it continues… Let us ask the Lord to remove the part
of Herod that lurks in our hearts; let us ask the Lord for the grace
to weep over our indifference, to weep over the cruelty of our world,
of our own hearts, and of all those who in anonymity make social and
economic decisions which open the door to tragic situations like
this.

“In
this liturgy, a penitential liturgy, we beg forgiveness for our
indifference to so many of our brothers and sisters. Father, we ask
your pardon for those who are complacent and closed amid comforts
which have deadened their hearts; we beg your forgiveness for those
who by their decisions on the global level have created situations
that lead to these tragedies”.

Vatican
City, 7 July 2013 (VIS) – The joy of consolation, the Cross and
prayer were the reference points in Christian mission proposed by
Pope Francis to the young seminarians, novices and all those who
participated in Mass celebrated this morning in St. Peter's Basilica.
A broad summary of the Holy Father's homily is given below:

“You
are seminarians, novices, young people on a vocational journey, from
every part of the world. You represent the Church’s youth! If the
Church is the Bride of Christ, you in a certain sense represent the
moment of betrothal, the Spring of vocation, the season of discovery
… in which foundations are laid for the future. … Today the word
of God speaks to us of mission. … What are the reference points of
Christian mission? The readings we have heard suggest three: the joy
of consolation, the Cross and prayer.

“The
first element: the joy of consolation. The prophet Isaiah is
addressing a people that has been through a dark period of exile, a
very difficult trial. But now the time of consolation has come for
Jerusalem; sadness and fear must give way to joy. ... What is the
reason for this invitation to joy? Because the Lord is going to pour
out over the Holy City and its inhabitants a 'cascade' of
consolation, a veritable overflow of consolation, a cascade of
maternal tenderness: 'You shall be carried upon her hip and dandled
upon her knees'. As when a mother takes her child upon her knee and
caresses him or her: so the Lord will do and does with us. This is
the cascade of tenderness which gives us much consolation. … Every
Christian, and especially you and I, is called to be a bearer of this
message of hope that gives serenity and joy: God’s consolation, his
tenderness towards all. But if we first experience the joy of being
consoled by him, of being loved by him, then we can bring that joy to
others. This is important if our mission is to be fruitful: to feel
God’s consolation and to pass it on to others! I have occasionally
met consecrated persons who are afraid of the consolations of God,
and … the poor things, they were tormented, because they are afraid
of this divine tenderness. But do not be afraid. Do not be afraid of
the consolations of the Lord. We must find the Lord who consoles us
and go to console the people of God. This is the mission. People
today certainly need words, but most of all they need us to bear
witness to the mercy and tenderness of the Lord, which warms the
heart, rekindles hope, and attracts people towards the good. What a
joy it is to bring God’s consolation to others!

“The
second reference point of mission is the Cross of Christ. Saint Paul,
writing to the Galatians, says: 'Far be it from me to glory except in
the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ'. … In his ministry Paul
experienced suffering, weakness and defeat, but also joy and
consolation. This is the Paschal mystery of Jesus: the mystery of
death and resurrection. ... In the hour of darkness, in the hour of
trial, the dawn of light and salvation is already present and
operative. The Paschal mystery is the beating heart of the Church’s
mission! And if we remain within this mystery, we are sheltered both
from a worldly and triumphalistic view of mission and from the
discouragement that can result from trials and failures. Pastoral
fruitfulness, the fruitfulness of the Gospel proclamation is measured
neither by success nor by failure according to the criteria of human
evaluation, but by conforming to the logic of the Cross of Jesus,
which is the logic of stepping outside oneself and offering oneself,
the logic of love. It is the Cross – always the Cross that is
present with Christ, because at times we are offered the Cross
without Christ: this has no purpose! … It is from the Cross, the
supreme act of mercy and love, that we are reborn as a 'new
creation'.

“Finally
the third element: prayer. In the Gospel we heard: 'Pray therefore
the Lord of the harvest, to send out labourers into his harvest'. The
labourers for the harvest are not chosen through advertising
campaigns or appeals of service and generosity, but they are 'chosen'
and 'sent' by God. It is He who chooses, it is He who sends ... it is
He who gives the mission. For this, prayer is important. The Church,
as Benedict XVI has often reiterated, is not ours, but God’s; and
how many times do we, consecrated men and women, think that the
Church is ours! We make of it… something that we invent in our
minds. But it is not ours!, it is God’s. The field to be cultivated
is His. The mission is grace. And if the Apostle is born of prayer,
he finds in prayer the light and strength of his action”.

“Dear
seminarians, dear novices, dear young people discerning your
vocations. … Listen well: 'evangelization is done on one’s
knees'. Always be men and women of prayer! Without a constant
relationship with God, the mission becomes a job. But for what do you
work? As a tailor, a cook, a priest – is your job being a priest,
being a sister? No. It is not a job, but rather something else. The
risk of activism, of relying too much on structures, is an
ever-present danger. If we look towards Jesus, we see that prior to
any important decision or event he recollected himself in intense and
prolonged prayer. Let us cultivate the contemplative dimension, even
amid the whirlwind of more urgent and heavy duties. And the more the
mission calls you to go out to the margins of existence, let your
heart be the more closely united to Christ’s heart, full of mercy
and love. Herein lies the secret of pastoral fruitfulness, of the
fruitfulness of a disciple of the Lord!

“Jesus
sends his followers out with no 'purse, no bag, no sandals'. The
spread of the Gospel is not guaranteed by the number of persons, nor
by the prestige of the institution, nor by the quantity of available
resources. What counts is being permeated by the love of Christ,
allowing oneself be led by the Holy Spirit and to graft one’s own
life onto the tree of life, which is the Lord’s Cross.

“Dear
friends, with great confidence I entrust you to the intercession of
Mary Most Holy. She is the Mother who helps us to take life
decisions freely and without fear. May she help you to bear witness
to the joy of God’s consolation, without being afraid of joy, she
will help you to conform yourselves to the logic of love of the
Cross, to grow in ever deeper union with the Lord in prayer. Then
your lives will be rich and fruitful!”

Vatican
City, 8 July 2013 (VIS) – At midday, following the Holy Mass
celebrated on the Day for seminarians, novices and those discerning
their vocations, in the context of the Year of Faith, Pope Francis
appeared at the window of his study to pray the Angelus with the
faithful and pilgrims gathered in St. Peter's Square.

The
Bishop of Rome appealed to all those present to pray for the
participants in this Day, “that their love for Christ might mature
more and more in their lives and that they might become true
missionaries of God's Kingdom”, and then went on to comment on this
Sunday's gospel, relating it to the call to the vocation.

“Jesus
is not an isolated missionary”, he said; “he does not want to
fulfill his mission alone, but involves his disciples. Today we see
that, in addition to the Twelve Apostles, He calls seventy-two
others, and sends them into the villages, two by two, to announce
that the Kingdom of God is near. This is very beautiful! Jesus does
not want to act alone, He has come to bring to the world the love of
God and wants to spread that love with communion and fraternity. For
this reason, he immediately forms a community of disciples, a
missionary community, and trains them for the mission”.

“Beware,
however: the purpose is not to socialize, to spend time together –
no, the purpose is to proclaim the Kingdom of God, and this is
urgent! There is no time to waste in small talk, no need to wait for
the consent of all – it is necessary to go out and proclaim. The
peace of Christ is to be brought to everyone, and if some do not
welcome it, then you go on. Healing is to be brought to the sick, as
God wishes to heal man from all evil. How many missionaries do this!
They sow life, health, comfort in the peripheries of the world”.

“These
seventy-two disciples, whom Jesus sent ahead of him, who are they?
Whom do they represent? If the Twelve are the Apostles, and therefore
also represent the Bishops, their successors, these may represent
seventy-two other ordained ministers – priests and deacons – but
in a wider sense we can think of other ministries in the Church,
catechists and lay faithful who engage in parish missions, those who
work with the sick, with the various forms of discomfort and
alienation, but always as missionaries of the Gospel, with the
urgency of the Kingdom that is at hand. Everyone must become
missionaries, everyone can hear Jesus' call and go on to proclaim His
kingdom!

“The
Gospel says that those seventy-two returned from their mission full
of joy, because they had experienced the power of the Name of Christ
against evil. … We should not boast as if we were the protagonists:
the protagonist is the Lord and His grace. Our joy is only this: in
being His disciples, His friends. … Do not be afraid of being
joyful! … It is the joy that the Lord gives us when we let Him
enter into our lives and invite us to go forth into the peripheries
of life and announce the Gospel, with joy and courage!”

After
the Angelus, Pope Francis mentioned that two days ago his first
encyclical, “Lumen Fidei” (On the Light of Faith) was published.
Pope Benedict XVI had started this encyclical for the Year of Faith
and to follow the previous encyclicals dedicated to love and hope. “I
picked up this fine project and completed it. I offer it with joy to
the whole People of God: indeed, today more than ever before, we need
to return to the essentials of the Christian faith, to deepen it, and
to measure current issues by it. I think that this encyclical, at
least in some parts, can also be useful to those who are searching
for God and for the meaning of life. I entrust it to the hands of
Mary, the perfect icon of faith, that it may bring the fruits the
Lord wishes”.

The
Holy Father went on to greet the young people of the diocese of Rome
who are preparing to go to Rio de Janeiro to participate in World
Youth Day. “Dear young people, I too am preparing! Let us walk
together towards this great celebration of faith! May Our Lady
accompany us”.

Finally,
he greeted the Franciscan Sisters and the Rosminian Angeline Sisters,
who are holding their General Chapters, and the leaders of the
Community of Sant'Egidio who have come to Rome from various countries
to attend a training course.

Vatican
City, 6 July 2013 (VIS) – This morning in the Vatican Apostolic
Palace, the Holy Father received in audience the president of the
Republic of Trinidad and Tobago, Anthony Thomas Aquinas Carmona. The
president subsequently went on to meet with Cardinal Secretary of
State Tarcisio Bertone S.D.B., accompanied by Archbishop Dominique
Mamberti, secretary for Relations with States.

During
the course of the colloquial discussions, several topics were covered
including the contribution the Catholic Church offers to the
population, especially in the fields of education, health and
assistance to the needy and vulnerable. The Parties expressed their
commitment to fruitful collaboration in supporting the young in the
fight against crime and violence.

Finally,
the focus turned to important themes such as the full formation of
the person and the protection of the family.

Vatican
City, 6 July 2013 (VIS) - “A witness of hope” was how Pope
Francis defined the late Cardinal Francois-Xavier Nguyen Van Thuan,
who had been the president of the Pontifical Council for Justice and
Peace, and for whom the diocesan phase of the beatification process
has now come to an end.

This
morning in the Vatican Apostolic Palace the Holy Father greeted the
participants in the closing session of this phase and thanked Waldery
Hilgeman, postulator of the cause of Cardinal Van Thuan's
beatification, emphasizing that “many people can testify to their
edification through meeting the Servant of God Francois-Xavier Nguyen
Van Thuan in various stages of his life”.

“The
experience shows that his renowned holiness was transmitted through
the testimony of the many people who met him and who cherish within
their hearts his gentle smile and the greatness of his sensibility.
Many encountered him through his writings, simple yet profound, which
demonstrate his priestly heart, deeply united with He who called him
to be the minister of His mercy and His love. Many people have
written to tell of grace received and signs attributed to the
intercession of this venerated Brother, son of the east, who has
completed his earthly journey in the service of Peter's Successor.

“We
entrust the furthering of his cause, and all the others currently in
process, to the intercession of the Virgin Mary. May Our Lady help us
to live ever more the beauty and joy of communion with Christ”, the
Pope concluded.